cable to the fequeftered Druids. The ufe of it, therefore, can only be confidered as a cuftom, originating in a fyftem of aftronomical fuperftition, like that to which the Brahmins and the Druids were devoted, who attended with equal anxiety to the viciffitudes of that orb; and by her motions regulated their most facred feftivals. It was when the moon was . fix days old, according to Pliny,* that the latter marched in folemn proceffion to gather the hallowed mifletoe; and it was from that precife period, every thirtieth year, that they began to count anew the months and years which formed their celebrated cycle of that duration. In the fecond volume of Mountfaucon's Antiquities, oppofite page 276, there is a sculpture that remarkably illuftrates this relation of Pliny. It is on a bass-relief, found at Autun, and represents the Archimagus, bearing the fceptre, as head of his order, and crowned with a garland of oaken leaves, with another Druid, not thus decorated, approaching him, and difplaying in his right hand a crescent of the size of the moon, when fix days old. By the aspect and pofture of the latter, he seems to be fome Druid aftronomer, in the

Plinii Nat. Hift. lib. xxv. cap. 44.

act

act of informing his chief that the day of that high feftivity was arrived, on which either the misletoe was to be cut, or the new period to commence its revolution. On the Karnbre coins it repeatedly occurs, and sometimes two or three crefcents are seen on the fame coin.

I cannot conclude this final head of the extenfive parallel which has now been drawn between the Druid and Indian fuperftitions, without obferving that there is another kind of circle repeatedly occurring among the stone monuments of the Druids, that of the ellipfis, which can scarcely fail of impreffing the mind, that seriously reflects on all the proofs of their wisdom previously enumerated, that they were fo far advanced in aftronomy as to have known the elliptical courfes defcribed, in their revolution, by the heavenly bodies, a circumstance not suspected in modern Europe till the time of the ingenious Kepler, who was as great a geometrician as an aftronomer. The hypothefis of Kepler, however, was by no means at firft generally believed by aftronomers, till Caffini and Newton, by their still profounder researches in philofophy, placed the matter beyond the poffibility of doubt. This their veneration for the aftronomical

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fymbol

fymbol of the crefcent may be alfo regarded as an additional proof that those crescent-like temples, in Anglesea and Orkney, which fome have mistaken for amphitheatres, were really temples to the moon,

THE GENERAL RESULT OF THE PRECEDING

OBSERVATIONS,

FROM the evidence above fubmitted to the candid reader, he will be able to form his own judgment concerning the truth or futility of the original propofition with which I fet out, viz. that a colony of priests, profeffing the Brahmin religion, and educated in the great fchool of Babylon, actually emigrated, in the moft early periods, from Afia, with the Japhetic tribes who eftablifhed themselves in Europe. To ftate precifely the exact æra of that migration is impoffible at this distance of time; but, from the evident mixture of the leading principles and peculiar rites of the Sabian idolatry with those of the pure patriarchal theology, it must have happened after. the period in which Belus and his defcendants, the great corruptors of the Noachic fyftem of faith, had introduced thofe ido

VOL. VI.

latries

latries among their fubjects of the Greater Afia.

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The Indians, at that time, formed a diftinguifhed part of the Perfian empire; for we have feen that their first dynasty, commencing under an iniquitous prince named Bali, deftroyed by the burfting of a marble pillar at the very moment he was blafpheming his Maker, fate on the throne of Perfia before the whole nation croffed the Indus, never to return. This general migration probably took place immediately after that fatal event, which fo forcibly points to us, under the veil of Eastern mythology, the destruction of Babel, and the confequent difperfion. The Hebrew chronology places the difperfion, or, at least, the birth of Peleg, (at which period the Scriptures affert that event to have taken place,) in the 101ft year after the flood; but, as that period feems too early in post-diluvian annals for fo great an increase of the human fpecies to have taken place, as must be fuppofed on the hypothefis of a vast empire formed, and Afia overflowing with numbers, and as we may without impiety embrace a fyftem of chronology lefs perplexing to that hypothefis, fo many learned men have adopted the Samaritan chronology, which computes

putes that event to have taken place about the 400th year after the flood. By this rational mode of computation, a variety of difficulties, otherwise scarcely furmountable, are got over. The remembrance of the grand diffolution might by that time have grown more faint in their minds, and their horrors fo far abated, that they may, with lefs outrage to probability, be fuppofed capable of erecting a tower to brave the power of the Deity, who, in his wrath, had deluged the former guilty world; and the earth itself, by the powerful action of the fun and winds during this extended interval, better prepared in every region to receive the fwarming multitudes that were now defcending from the overcharged plains of Shinar, and all the mountainous regions of Afia, to the abodes destined for them by Providence. In adopting this, which appears to me the more plausible system, I would by no means be understood to intimate that no partial migration towards the countries nearer the eastern limits of the world, previoufly to the grand difperfion, might have taken place: on the contrary, I am very much inclined to believe that Noah himself, who lived 350 years after the flood, attended by the more virtuous of his defcendants,

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